Neith felt cold. “You are not a Dhevai.”
“You think all those babies that gestate in your people, you think they all look like you? No, you have no idea, because you don’t let them live. They murder your men, so you murder them. But some of us survive. And some of us become members of the Consortium.”
The sun had slipped below the horizon. A radiant swathe of red and violet color painted the sky in the west, out behind Safiya’s shoulder. A low rumble sounded out across the sky -- not the steady roar of an incoming transport or cargo ship, but the rolling murmur of thunder.
Neith felt an echo of that murmur inside her, that distant stirring of discontent, of confusion, of anger. She could not move from her chair, could not think, and all the words she wanted to say were swallowed in the far-off rumble of thunder.
“The Consortium is ruled by a different set of leaders now,” Safiya said, softly, “a new government that’s dissolving all set rules of engagement. They’re sending a council out here to oversee the resolution of the war. It’s gone on long enough, they say. The Dhevai agree with them.”
Neith needed to stand, to breathe. She walked over to the glass wall that looked out across the city, pressed her palms against the wall. “You’re lying.”
“Oh, maybe so. You’ll know soon enough, I suppose. The council was sent right after us. A week, maybe two. They’ll come.”
“Why did you get on that transport? There was a Dhevai man detected on it. Who was he to you?”
“My husband,” she said. “But that was a sacrifice I was willing to make, if it brought us peace.”
Neith met the ashen gray gaze, remembered her sons.
The arrival bell sounded at the lift.
Hasina hurried into the room, her gestures frantic, her chatter disorganized.
“Ah! So good you’re still here! The President has arrived early,” she said. “Can you believe she’s really here? Oh, I’m interrupting. She’s asked to see the diplomat, Neith, and if you could brief her before –”
“I need to go home,” Neith said.
Hasina stared at her. “Home? Oh, yes, after the briefing, certainly. The President is expecting you, and it is certainly your duty to –”
Neith glanced at Safiya. “Thank you,” Neith said. She didn’t know what she was thanking her for.
Hasina looked incredulously at them both and talked, and talked, and Neith let Hasina talk as she walked past her into the lift. Hasina called after her once; a frantic cry about duty, about responsibility, about a woman’s place, a woman’s sacrifice.
Everything from the book of war.
A war no one wanted to fight anymore.
Neith walked back down the paved path that led to the faculty houses, passed the tall stands of banana trees, the muddy pond, the wild gardens. The thunder rumbled above her. A soft wind kissed her face. She came to the little garden in front of her house and stood at its edge. The house was dark.
Neith stood for a time by the garden, until her legs ached and the wind caught at her trousers, licked at her braided hair. She walked up to the house, sat down outside the door.
“I’m sorry,” she said, but there was no one to hear her.
A raindrop landed on her arm. Speckled her arms, her clothing. She wiped the wet across her face, gazed up at the black sky.
“Neith?”
Her husband out on the paved walk holding a small sack of rations in one hand. He wore no coat, no hat. The rain was cool and soft.
“I watched them die,” she said above the soft tap-tapping of the rain on the paved walk.
“They died a year ago.”
“I rewrote the truth, Jahi. I followed the rules. But the rules are all wrong. There should be no rules for war. There should be no code for it. To prescribe rules means you accept it as a fact.”
She did not know she was crying, did not know that the tears on her face weren’t rain. She did not know until Jahi sat beside her and wrapped his arms around her and she buried her face against him, this skinny man she loved so much, the man who looked for truth in all those lies she told, the man who was the only love of a woman raised in a girls’ breeding school, raised to fight and die for a cause; to love a nation, not a person, to save her race, not herself.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and he did not ask what for.
They went inside the little round house surrounded in banana trees and Jahi stacked up his books by the desk and curled up next to her in their bed, and Neith talked and talked as the rain fell across Tauret and the thunder rolled across the sky.
“I chose you,” she told him. She told him a truth he could not touch, a truth he could not read, a truth he could not alter. It was her truth, her past, her sacrifice. And his.
Theirs.
Far above, Bakarai awaited her return. She did not know how long he would have to wait.
END
Overdark
Everything that mattered happened in the dark.
It was eighteen in the morning, the deepest part of the black, with the promise of dawn another eight hours distant. This was when they brought in the suicides, the lunatics, the infanticides, the condemned; all the twisted and brutalized bodies that the day shift refused to process but management needed to clear.
In their long, stark-white rooms, the butchers worked nimbly, silently during the twenty-hour cycle of darkness.
The body they brought in that night was just another bruised husk, some mangled thing the techs hauled in under the ruinous glare of the organic over-lights. The worms were dying in the light casings up there, so the glow along the far edge of the operating room was pale lavender instead of white.
“Where did you find her?” Taryka asked the body techs as she ripped open the green slick that protected the corpse. She never did like the quiet between body dumps. Every new body the techs scavenged was another excuse for chatter, for the promise of human warmth - anything to prove she was alive in all this endless night.
“The docks,” said Paya, the elder tech. Taryka had worked with her for several cycles.
“Water? Port? Elevator? It matters,” Taryka said.
“Let her know,” Paya said to the new tech.
The tech sighed. He was just a kid, a couple months on the job. His partner was already finishing up the body check-in on the big wall projection. Taryka saw already that he wouldn’t make it on the overdark shift. Living your life in the black was one thing, but living your life in the black of the overdark reprocessing corpses was another.
“Found it near the elevator dock,” he said, referring to his rollup display.
“There are three in this sector. Which one?”
“It’s not on here,” the kid said.
Beneath the slick, the body was dry and desiccated. If they were anywhere near a desert, some forensic might have guessed it was a mummy right off, but enough elevators opened into vacuum now that the desert was the least likely way this body had met its end. The corpse lay curled on its side, elbows tucked, mouth yawning, feet crossed. It was naked, as one would expect. Bodies that came in this way were always stripped of valuables long before the processing crews found them. Especially if they died near an elevator where the throw-offs and castaways congregated.
“All right,” Taryka said. She reached behind her for the bone saw. There was very rarely a body in hand with a complete finder’s report. Why did everyone hate data entry so much? Taryka found it calming.
The boy tech turned away quickly. “That’s everything, Paya? Do I sign something?”
“No,” Paya said. Then, to Taryka, “I’ve checked the body itself against our database. Verified it’s not in the system. Must have been some off-station stray, not one of our own. It happens.” Paya tapped her forehead at Taryka. “You’ll have to check with the rest of the fleet to see if her code matches any strays.”
Taryka rolled her eyes, and Paya mimicked her. They both knew how likely it was to get an
ything useful from other ships. Each was like its own nation now, suspicious and insulated.
“May you find your way,” Taryka said.
“And you yours,” Paya said.
When they were gone, Taryka sighed, alone again in the stillness. She cracked open the body’s chest and studied the state of the organs. More or less salvageable, with some creative treatment. She began preparing her solution. During the dark shift, they sometimes bothered with an autopsy, but during the overdark shift, management expressly forbid it. It cut into profits, and at no gain. If they accidently processed someone with legal funerary rights, it would cost them less to pay out than it cost the butchers to perform an autopsy on every wayward body that crossed the slab.
She turned the body over for better access to the kidneys. She made a small incision to check their health. They looked good; they were easier to rehydrate. As she moved away to make note of it, she saw an indentation just above the left hip. Someone had been peeling at the skin. She rubbed at it, and saw the traces of an inked tattoo. She knew they sometimes tattooed company bodies on the left hip, the ones management imported from the lower levels as C-level executive administrative staff. Limited resources on the topside levels meant the new bodies that got up had to be signed in and accounted for at all times. And anybody they had imported from some other ship beyond the vacuum… well, those were even rarer. Those came over at great expense. It was most likely a lower-level refugee. But every body had to be examined, the particulates catalogued, the cause of death logged for the health inspection authority. In such confined spaces, viral and bacterial contagions could spell the doom of the entire ship; every child grew up watching recordings of ships that had fallen to such contagions in the past.
Taryka grabbed a specimen slide and scraped quickly at the grit beneath the body’s nails. She stored it on the transparent slide and slipped it into the analyzer behind her, then switched it on.
“Taryka?”
She started, and knocked the analyzer off. Turned.
Giati, one of the butchers who worked near reception, smiled at her from the doorway. There was a familiar man behind her, dressed in a formal doctor’s scrubs and long white coat.
“Sorry, Doctor Divati is taking this one tonight,” Giati said.
“Have you started?” Divati said before she could speak. He was a round-faced, pleasant man ordinarily, but tonight he was brisk. He pushed past Giati and went straight for the body.
“No, not yet. Just opened the chest. The organs are good.”
“Perfect, that’s fine. I’m taking this one tonight. Have a class scheduled tonight. Last minute.” He pulled the slick closed. It hissed and melted and sealed itself. He smiled thinly. “Did you remove anything from the body?”
“No, nothing,” Taryka said.
“Wonderful. Perfect. Giati, excuse me.” He released the body’s carriage, and the carriage floated free of the examining table. “I’ll be sure to have them send you the next one. Idle hands drive idle minds.”
Taryka forced a smile as she watched him leave, pushing the body out ahead of him. When he was gone, she slipped the slide in her analyzer into her pocket.
At the end of her shift, she dropped off her bundle of reconstituted organs, pulled off her slick, and showered. She stopped by Giati’s desk on the way out.
“Did they do an autopsy on that first girl? The one Doctor Divati took in?”
“Don’t know. You can check the file. Her tag is EV543-CG. He had me code it into the analyzer before I left.”
Taryka used Giati’s table slide to look it up.
Cause of death was listed as an overdose of violet gas, no signs of violence. A slow, cold knot of unease unfurled in her belly. She had seen no indication of exposure to violet gas. No reddening under the nails. No damage to the kidneys. No staining around the mouth.
“Walk me out?” Giati said.
Taryka nodded. They never left the compound alone anymore. Three of the staff were killed the year before during some food riot. When food was scarce, the body docks were one of the first places people looked for nourishment. They’d torn one of the butchers apart limb from limb and gnawed the face off another before security arrived.
She and Giati parted at the tube station. Taryka rode home alone as the gray light of another gray day touched the long, dim, crescent of the horizon. Some days the dawns were blinding, but since the Nothing had blown out the world on the other side of the water bay, sunrises like that came a lot less often.
Inside her windowless flat, a skein of messages waited on the slide inside the door. She ignored them, pulled off her clothes, and sank into her bed at the center of the room. Somewhere distant, a chime sounded, reminding the faithful that today was another day of fasting. Fasting twice a week kept one more in touch with the body. And, of course, conserved protein and plant matter.
Taryka had never had trouble with fasting. Her sister had, though… right up until the end.
She woke in the dead of the morning, abruptly, from a black sleep. The room was completely dark. There was no sound. Quiet as a body dock.
Taryka’s dreams swam with images of the desiccated body from her last shift; the tattoo forming and re-forming in her mind, rippling and then breaking apart before she could make out the image.
Why lie about how she died? Who was she?
You have a fool mind, her sister always told her. A mind that cannot let it be. Just let it be, Taryka, let it be.
Taryka pushed out of bed and tapped on a light. The worms in the glass stirred, and a wave of amber light spilled across her vision, made her squint. She rummaged through her pockets and found the slide specimen she’d taken from the girl’s fingernails.
She tapped the slide into her analyzer and turned it on. The machine made a soft purring sound. The report popped up on the desk next to her. She leaned over and studied it.
“What are these?” she asked, pointing to two sets of DNA codes.
“Blood samples,” the analyzer said sweetly. “The organic matter detected includes the blood of two distinct individuals. Also, there are chemical traces of amphorite, iron, and chitin larva.”
“Can you identify the individuals?”
“No matches available.”
“What stage are the larva?” Taryka muddled over the report again. Everyone inside their ship was catalogued in the DNA database. If there was no match, it meant the organic matter under her nails had come from two unregistered people from outside the ship.
“Three days and 29 hours.”
“Can you match that to an area around the new elevator project?”
“Negative. That area does not contain chitin or amphorite."
"What does?”
“Numerous locations on the world utilize amphorite for their everyday needs, including –“
“I know, I know. What about the chitin? That’s water, isn’t it?”
“Correct. Large bodies of standing water serve as breeding grounds for chitin larva, which turn into pupae in three days and adult flesh beetles in eight days.”
“How long does it take flesh beetles to devour a body?”
“It takes fourteen days for flesh beetles to strip the flesh from a body.”
Taryka pushed her clothes off a nearby chair and sat. Regarded the analyzer. “Is Paya up?”
“I have no immediate way of knowing this.”
“Call Paya.”
“Pinging Paya.”
Her display warmed, but showed only the default orange-red glow of the default image.
“How are you awake this early?” Paya said.
“Did I interrupt you? You’re not using visual.”
“Not all of us look at good as you first thing in the morning.”
“I’ve discovered...” she hesitated. Communications were always monitored. “I have something important to discuss with you, regarding a work project. Can you meet to break the fast?”
“No, today’s a fasting day.”
“Right. Tea, then?”
“Let the overdark fade a little more before dragging me out,” she said. “Couple more turns?”
“All right.”
They met at the only tea shop on their level; the restaurants and food vendors were closed in observance of the holy day. It mean the tea shop was busier, which Taryka found both soothing and frightening.
Paya sat, folding her bony body into the battered seat. Three generations of their ancestors had inhabited this space, used these same tools, bound by a single purpose. The wear and tear was showing, now - in the ship, and in their own weary bodies. Paya was a generation older, thirty years’ Taryka’s senior.
“What’s so mind-blowing you couldn’t log it?” Paya said, hands curled around her chipped tea cup.
“That last body you brought in last night - I did a cursory examination before it was hauled away. Doctor Divati was scheduled to do the autopsy, but... his results don’t match anything I observed and....”
“Oh boy,” Paya said. “I know that look.” She leaned closer, said, “Don’t do anything to get yourself banished.”
“I’m not, it’s just... a mystery. A bone that gets caught in my teeth. I can’t dislodge it.”
“Where are you starting?”
“You said there’s no record of her, maybe she’s a stray. But she also had organic matter from two more off-ship as well. That means there was more than one. She wasn’t an anomaly.”
“They’re all anomalies. They should stay on their own ships.”
“We don’t know what it’s like out there,” she said. “It could be a matter of choosing a lesser evil.”
“Casting oneself off into the blackness between the ships out there... I don’t know.” Paya sipped her tea. She savored it every time; she was only permitted three cups a day to Taryka’s five. When Taryka once offered to give over one of hers, Paya had laughed and said, “When you’re old like me you’ll get just as many. I had your advantages once. Life is a cycle. You enjoy your stage of it.”
“We’ve seen a lot more bodies like this in the last year,” Taryka said. “Our ship is a closed system, and yes, it’s had its challenges, but... where is all of this extra matter coming from? If these bodies are truly from other ships, then there must be some great war or plague out there that we don’t know about.”
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